It is January, and the donations to Oxfam come in droves – well actually bin bags, collapsing boxes, crates that the donator wants back – but, ‘hey, could you empty that more quickly as my car is on a yellow line.’

And there is something about January donations.

They tend to be the ones that come from cleared out garages or attics.

 

(By the way, that is my mug and that umbrella has been there for several months.)

And that, dear regular reader as you must know, means they are damp, browned, aged – but not so aged they could be worth something…..

So, I went into the shop to re-arrange it, and a great volunteer agreed to do an extra shift to help me.

The thing is that we move (to Bognor or a re-cycling sack) a lot of books to allow space for the ‘new product’ Christmas stuff – and afterwards we can not quite remember what was there before and more to the point, we don’t have enough stock to just fill up those shelves.

(We had completely removed Self Help – as it never sells – whoever bought those ‘how to make your life better books’, did not find that having them on their bookshelves automatically sorted the issue. Self help books are usually donated in pristine condition.

But in January I need to re-instate that shelf – and do we have enough books to do that? You bet we do.)

I got permission from my manager to move the CD’s and extend the children’s shelves and generally move everything around so that we could re-fill the space left by the bedraggled remnants of Christmas stock.

It was a quiet Monday morning so the volunteer on the till and the extra-shift volunteer set to moving all things around.

Was I just issuing commands? Well, yes and no.

I was peering round from the door at the back issuing further instructions and generally thanking and praising, between dealing with ( and ‘dealing with’ means a lot of books into re-cycling sacks and relatively few into crates to be sent upstairs to be priced and shelved) an apparently never-ending slough of donations.

The teetering pile had had a dent made in it on Saturday by another sterling volunteer, but just as I thought I might me making headway on Monday, another smiling donator would bring in ‘the first of a few boxes…’

And so it went on – and on, and on.

By 3pm I had had enough, and decided to leave.

The shelves looked OK, the pile was cleared – but things are still amiss:

For the first time since I have worked there – and yes dear reader, that is some years – we are short of natural history books.

Those shelves, upstairs and down, are literally bare.

We usually have loads of books on birds, animals, insects, the geology of Cornwall (actually we do have one of those but it is not likely to be a great seller in Petersfield), the Natural History of Selbourne (Gilbert White lived just up the road), trees, the coast etc etc.

But right at this moment, nothing.

As you know, I change the table display every week usually on a Thursday.

This week, I am planning to put The Geology of Cornwall and the one, solitary, bird book we have, on the table with a notice saying:

 

Thank you so much to everyone who donates books here.

Oxfam could not do its work with the poor and war-torn without you.

Our bookshop could not survive without your donations.

We are grateful for every donation but we would especially be grateful for books you no longer need on anything to do with

NATURAL HISTORY.

Thank you.

What do you think? Will that work?